May, 16 2016, 12:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Todd True, Earthjustice, 206-343-7340, ext. 1030, ttrue@earthjustice.org
Susan Jane Brown, Western Environmental Law Center, 503-680-5513, brown@westernlaw.org
Joseph Vaile, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, 541-488-5789, joseph@kswild.org
Glen Spain, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, 541-689-2000, fish1ifr@aol.com
Steve Holmer, American Bird Conservancy, 202-888-7490, sholmer@abcbirds.org
Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands, 314-482-3746, nick@cascwild.org
John Kober, Pacific Rivers, 503-915-6677, john@pacificrivers.org
Groups Protest Oregon Timber Plan Riddled With Loopholes
Latest BLM Plan Increases Clearcutting and Dismantles Streamside Forest Protections for Clean Water, Salmon, and Communities
WASHINGTON
Today, Earthjustice and the Western Environmental Law Center, on behalf of 22 conservation and fishing groups, filed a formal protest with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) objecting to its proposed management plans for western Oregon. The BLM plan eliminates protections for streamside forests, increases clearcutting, and removes 2.6 million acres of these federally managed public forests from the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.
The plan proposes to increase logging levels by 37 percent, which will boost carbon emissions and make the forest less resilient to climate change and other disturbances. But the fishing organizations are most concerned about the reduction in streamside forest protection.
"The last, best salmon habitat in Oregon is within these BLM-managed forests," said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA), a major fishing industry trade association that also joined the petition. "Productive salmon streams are far more valuable for the salmon-related jobs they create than for the market value of the lumber you could generate from logging them. Stronger stream protection makes excellent economic sense, logging them does not!"
"Clearcutting kills fish," said Joseph Vaile of the southern Oregon-based KS Wild. "We don't need more clearcuts. We need common-sense management that protects our water sources, stores carbon in ancient forests, and keeps the public at the table."
In southern Oregon, the BLM plan would remove the Applegate Adaptive Management Area that has enabled community input in land management.
BLM first attempted to revise its resource management plans in 2008. That plan, called the Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR and pronounced "whopper"), was the result of a sweetheart settlement between the Bush administration and the timber industry and was withdrawn by the Obama administration in 2009, resurrected by a federal judge in 2011 in response to a timber industry lawsuit, and finally rejected by a second federal judge in 2012.
"The latest proposal is like a zombie in a bad horror movie," said Todd True, an attorney with Earthjustice. "The Bush administration's fatally flawed WOPR is back from the dead to open up protected forests to clear-cut logging."
"This plan would impact the quality of life of rural residents, drinking water quality, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage," said Susan Jane Brown, staff attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. "We need to get this right. We must protect special places that Oregonians love while we work to restore forests and watersheds. A holistic view should drive our public land decisions - not simply finding ways to maximize logging."
The BLM's new management plan revision cuts corners scientifically and legally. It has significant problems, including:
- The proposed plan eliminates the strong water quality and habitat provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan, reducing streamside no-logging buffers by half or more (a loss of 300,000 acres of streamside reserves). These reductions threaten wild native fish, water quality, terrestrial species, and aquatic recreational opportunities.
- The proposed plan leaves many mature and old-growth forests and habitat unprotected. It includes loopholes for logging large and old trees, and would reduce buffers or eliminate survey requirements for sensitive wildlife that depend on old forest habitat.
- BLM's chosen plan represents the least ambitious carbon sequestration alternative analyzed. Over the next century, the status quo would sequester twice as much carbon.
- The BLM's plan focuses on more intensive, clearcut-style logging on nearly half a million acres of forests, abandoning the direction towards restoration of forests and watersheds under the Northwest Forest Plan.
- While additional recreation areas are designated under the plan, in many of these areas logging and off-road motorized use take precedence and could diminish the types of recreation the vast majority of Oregonians enjoy.
"Years ago, many of the BLM lands were sacrifice zones, where logging, mining, and grazing were king. Then came the Northwest Forest Plan which established a sustainable balance between conservation and management," said Nick Cady of Cascadia Wildlands. "Today, more people live and work in western Oregon because they were drawn to its recreational opportunities and amenity economy, not the extractive industries of the past. It's time for the BLM to wake up and manage these lands as the vast majority of Oregonians and Americans demand."
"The best available science shows that unsustainable logging of our public forests has harmed clean water and healthy streams, pushed wildlife toward extinction, contributed to global warming, and destroyed much of Oregon's old-growth forests," said Oregon Wild's Doug Heiken. "BLM's proposed plan is a throwback to this terrible legacy. Today, our public forests should be preserved to address new realities -- the need to mitigate global warming, recover endangered species, protect clean water, and restore ecosystem function and resilience."
"Over 1.8 million Oregonians rely on BLM lands for their drinking water," said John Kober of Pacific Rivers. "Many of Oregon's most iconic rivers, such as the Rogue, Umpqua and McKenzie are sustained by the highly effective aquatic protections that have been in place for over 20 years. Scrapping proven stream protections in order to increase timber harvest is simply too risky given the benefits that our rivers provide."
A copy of the protest is available here.
The Western Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to safeguard the public lands, wildlife, and communities of the American West in the face of a changing climate. We envision a thriving, resilient West, abundant with protected public lands and wildlife, powered by clean energy, and defended by communities rooted in an ethic of conservation.
(541) 485-2471LATEST NEWS
Biden Labor Department Finalizes Pro-Worker Rules on Overtime, Retirement Savings
"Democrats are delivering for working people!" declared Rep. Pramila Jayapal as the AFL-CIO noted that GOP ex-President Donald Trump "gutted the rules that required overtime pay for millions of workers."
Apr 23, 2024
Roughly 4.3 million U.S. workers will now be eligible for overtime pay under a new rule finalized Tuesday by President Joe Biden's Labor Department—in stark contrast to his Republican predecessor's rules that severely limited the number of workers who were eligible for required compensation when they worked more than 40 hours per week.
Under the new rule, employers will be required to pay overtime premiums to salaried workers who work more than standard full-time hours if they earn less than $1,128 per week, or about $58,600 per year.
Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, may now have to defend his 2020 rule that set the overtime pay threshold at just $35,500 per year, leaving out millions of workers.
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) noted that the updated rule was "a major piece" of the Executive Action Agenda released by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which she chairs.
"This is a HUGE pro-worker initiative by President Biden," said Jayapal. "Democrats are delivering for working people!"
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, who Biden has nominated to fill the role permanently, said it is "unacceptable" that lower-paid workers "are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay," while hourly workers are eligible for overtime pay.
"This rule will restore the promise to workers that if you work more than 40 hours in a week, you should be paid more for that time," said Su. "The Biden-Harris administration is following through on our promise to raise the bar for workers who help lay the foundation for our economic prosperity."
The Labor Department posted a chart on social media showing how under Trump's policy, only workers who earn less than $688 per week are eligible for required overtime pay. The full rule is set to go into effect in January 2025.
The chart offers a "good split screen with the GOP," saidSlate reporter Mark Joseph Stern.
"It isn't just that Trump's Department of Labor fought overtime pay—it's also that Trump appointed anti-labor judges who are about to block Biden's new rule," he said.
The former Republican president's appointed judges could also block a new Federal Trade Commission rule introduced on Tuesday, which blocks companies from including noncompete clauses in workers' contracts.
"Both reforms happened because of Biden and in spite of Republicans," said HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson.
Along with the overtime rule, the Labor Department announced a new policy aimed at safeguarding people's retirement savings from their financial advisers' conflicts of interest.
The finalized retirement security rule requires "trusted investment advice providers to give prudent, loyal, honest advice free from overcharges," said the department. "These fiduciaries must adhere to high standards of care and loyalty when they recommend investments and avoid recommendations that favor the investment advice providers' interests—financial or otherwise—at the retirement savers' expense."
"Under the final rule and amended exemptions, financial institutions overseeing investment advice providers must have policies and procedures to manage conflicts of interest and ensure providers follow these guidelines," the agency said.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said the nation's largest labor federation has "been pushing for the fiduciary and overtime rules since the Obama administration."
"It's really this simple," said Shuler. "Every worker deserves their fair share of the wealth they help create and every worker deserves to make sure their hard-earned money is secure."
Keep ReadingShow Less
More Than 4 Dozen Unions Demand 'End of Repression' of Columbia Protests
"The right to protest is necessary for every struggle, and the direct attack on this right is an attack on labor as well," said the labor groups. "An injury to one is an injury to all."
Apr 23, 2024
More than four dozen labor unions across numerous industries on Tuesday signed a letter expressing solidarity with students who have been suspended and arrested in recent days for protesting at Columbia University, including members of the on-campus labor group Student Workers of Columbia.
Unionized student workers in SWC-UAW 2710 were among the hundreds of picketers who have been protecting the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which students set up at Columbia on April 17 to pressure administrators to divest from weapons manufacturers, tech companies, and other entities that benefit from Israel's apartheid policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Ivy League institution, protesters say, will remain complicit in Israel's bombardment and blockade on Gaza, the killing of at least 34,183 Palestinians in the enclave since October, and the intentional starvation of dozens of people, until it entirely divests from Israel.
"As workers, we stand in solidarity with our union siblings in SWC-UAW 2710 who were arrested and face suspension," said the unions, including the Mother Jones Staff Union, Irvine Faculty Association, and Cleveland Jobs With Justice. "We call for their and their classmates' immediate reinstatement and for Columbia to drop all charges against them, both legal and academic. We deplore [Columbia president Minouche Shafik]'s actions and call for Columbia to immediately end the repression of protest."
The protests at Columbia—where more than 100 students were suspended, arrested for trespassing, and in some cases, evicted from their housing—have galvanized college students and faculty members at a growing number of universities in recent days.
Campus groups at the University of Minnesota and the University of Pittsburgh both announced early Tuesday that they were setting up their own encampments in solidarity with Columbia students and victims of the Israel Defense Forces' relentless attacks on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice said in January was "plausibly" a genocide.
After police arrested students at the University of Minnesota Tuesday afternoon and broke up the encampment, thousands of members of the school community rallied to demand that the university divest from all arms manufacturers.
Encampments were also erected Monday at University of California, Berkeley and University of Michigan.
Jessica Christian, a photojournalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, reported that students were stopping to "ask what supplies the campers need as they walk by to class" at Berkeley, where roughly 50 tents were set up on Tuesday.
On Monday night, dozens of students at Yale University and New York University were arrested for protesting, setting up encampments, and "disorderly conduct."
The arrests at Columbia last week have not stopped students and educators from speaking out against the administration. A new encampment was set up last Friday and hundreds of faculty members staged a walkout Monday in support of the students.
In their letter, the unions on Tuesday warned that "the repression and criminalization of activists, students, professors, and academic workers across the country are violations of our elementary rights to free speech and protest."
"The right to protest is necessary for every struggle, and the direct attack on this right is an attack on labor as well," said the unions, "An injury to one is an injury to all—if the Columbia students can be repressed for protesting, Columbia workers and all workers could be too. Workers stand in full solidarity with this student movement."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Plastics Summit 'Die-In' Highlights Need to Cut Production
"This week governments have a choice: Stand up to this slash-and-burn approach by agreeing to radically reduce plastic output, or let the world be held to ransom by a dying industry."
Apr 23, 2024
As the fourth round of talks for a global plastics treaty kicked off in the Canadian capital on Tuesday, campaigners with the corporate accountability group Ekō staged a die-in at Ottawa's Shaw Centre to demand an ambitious plan to reduce production.
"Plastic pollution has reached the snows of Antarctica, the deepest oceans, even the clouds in the sky—and still fossil fuel corporations are trying to ramp up production," explained Ekō campaign director Vicky Wyatt. "This week governments have a choice: Stand up to this slash-and-burn approach by agreeing to radically reduce plastic output, or let the world be held to ransom by a dying industry. It's very clear to people across the planet which way they need to go."
Demonstrators—some wearing fish masks to highlight how plastic pollution impacts marine biodiversity—gathered in front of a 28-foot banner that used plastic trash bags to spell out: "Plastic is poisoning us. Cut production now."
(Photo: Ben Powless/Survival Media Agency)
Participants in the die-in—which followed the weekend's "March to End the Plastic Era" through the Canadian city—held smaller signs with similar messages, demanding that governments and industry "stop fueling climate chaos."
As Common Dreamsreported last week, new research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California shows that planet-heating pollution from the plastics industry is equivalent to that of about 600 coal-fired power plants, and 75% of the greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production are released before the plastic compounds are even created.
The protesters also highlighted that more than 180,000 Ekō members have signed a petition urging action on plastic pollution. The petition specifically calls for banning all plastic waste exports from the European Union and fully implementing the Basel Convention within the bloc, while the summit has a global focus and the plan is to have a treaty by the end of this year.
After countries agreed to draft a treaty two years ago, the latest talks in Kenya last year were flooded by fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists and ended with little progress, increasing attention on the Canadian meeting that began Tuesday and is scheduled to run through Monday.
"It's a crucial moment of this process," Andrés Gómez Carrión, chair of the negotiations and an Ecuadorian diplomat in the United Kingdom, toldReuters on Monday. "One of the biggest challenges is to define where the plastics lifecycle starts and define what sustainable production and consumption is."
Petrochemical-producing countries including China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia "have opposed mentioning production limits" while E.U. members, island nations, and Japan aim to "end plastic pollution by 2040," the news agency reported. The United States supports that timeline but "wants countries to set their own plans for doing so" and submit pledges to the United Nations.
"We are facing a global plastics crisis that requires urgent, global action. Reducing plastic production needs to be a core component of the solution," Christy Leavitt, campaign director at Oceana in the United States, said in a statement. "Countries must act now to stop the flood of plastic pollution that is harming our oceans, climate, health, and communities by starting at the source to reduce its production."
"The U.S. should support a strong, legally binding plastics treaty that addresses the full life cycle of this persistent pollutant from extraction and production to use and disposal," Leavitt added. "Now is the time for the United States to show its support to reduce plastic production, eliminate unnecessary single-use plastics, prohibit hazardous chemicals in plastics, and establish mandatory targets for reuse and refill systems. The United States and the world must act before it's too late."
Greenpeace last month installed a 15-foot monument outside the U.S. Capitol to send President Joe Biden a message.
"He can be the president who put an end to the plastic pollution crisis, or he can be the one who let it spiral out of control," Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar said of Biden. "We're calling on him to stand up to plastic polluters like Exxon and Dow and put us on a greener and healthier path."
The petrochemical industry, Reuters noted, "argues that production caps would lead to higher prices for consumers, and that the treaty should address plastics only after they are made."
Sam Cossar-Gilbert of Friends of the Earth International emphasized the need to resist corporate pressure in a statement Tuesday.
"A people-powered movement and some governments are proposing ambitious steps to address the plastic problem, like regulating the harmful waste trade, single-use bans, and reducing global plastic production," said Cossar-Gilbert. "But multinational corporations will also be lobbying with their false solutions, distractions, and delays. Only by stamping out corporate capture can we deliver a new global treaty to end plastic pollution."
Mageswari Sangaralingam from the green group's Malaysian arm, Sahabat Alam Malaysia, stressed the need for strong waste management policies, given that Global South countries have become dumping grounds for richer nations' discarded plastic.
"Waste colonialism, whether in the form of trade in plastic waste and other hidden plastics, perpetuates social and environmental injustice," said Sangaralingam. "However, ending the plastic waste trade without reducing plastic production will likely trigger more dumping, cause toxic pollution, and contribute to the climate crisis. The global plastics treaty is an opportunity to plug loopholes and address policy gaps to end plastic pollution."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular